How to get rid of Firewall popup on Windows on Packaged build

Development Platform & Builds
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I have a project that is completely offline, and has no functionality or blueprints related to networking what-so-ever.

Still, when I have packaged the game with “Distribution” and “Shipping” enabled, the packaged build prompts me with the Firewall popup in Windows.

How do I get rid of this? I have tried to disable plugins that sounds that have any networking in them (UDP, networking, multiplayer things, etc.) but the popup still prevails.

Clients get very skeptical when this pops up, in this day and age this scares people.

2

Hi @Agint

Unreal engine uses a swarm agent system to allow jobs to be processed by other computers on the network.

Epic Games Firewall Exceptions

To be able to use the Epic Launcher, Unreal Engine, and Swarm Agent, some ports and domains will need to be whitelisted:

Adding these in should help but dont worry too luch as lon as your code is your code you know whats in there. If its third party then maybe consider adding those exceptions. If you still get warnings after that i would then look into plugins and code you may have acquired elsewhere

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Thank you for the answer High500,

But isn’t this mostly related to the editor itself when producing, and not the packaged builds for distribution?

I will read through your information more carefully though, and I will conduct som tests on a completely clean PC with a clean install of Unreal, publishing a completely empty level - then I can atleast rule out any third party software and plugins.

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Sorry i misread packaged as packaging, long day sorry thought you meant during the build pricess.

If anything does help tho let us know, maybe packaged products talk to epic? Im guessing they shouldnt without Using EOS. My current packaged build doesnt trigger firewall.

5

Thank you, it helps to know that your build doesn’t trigger the firewall.

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Can atleast now confirm that a blank project packaged for Windows, on a clean computer, does not trigger the Windows Firewall.

I then transfered the project in question to the clean computer. Now this also builds and runs without any firewall popup.

Funny thing, my workstation build is 120MB larger than the clean computer.

So I checked the plugins on both my workstation and the clean computer, they are perfectly identical, and I then reset my cache on the workstation and rebuilt again. But still this machine produces the firewall popup, and is 120MB larger!

I am starting to suspect badly configured libraries in Visual Studio, if I have managed to screw up something there. Will reinstall VS and check if it solves the problem tomorrow :s

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Update:

I completely removed all SDKs of Windows, .NET, C++ on my system, completely uninstalled Visual Code, and then reinstalled it with the bare minimum needed for Unreal Engine to package (identical to my fresh PC).

Then cleared cache once more.

Problem still prevails, builds from workstation are 120ish MB larger and Firewall popup appears when starting the pacakged build :confused:

Will try to completely reinstall Unreal 5.1 next.

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Hi.

If you’re not using achievements or similar, try disabling all plugins in the Online category. There’s a chance your default OnlineSubsystem is trying to connect with its service and this is throwing the Windows alert.

Not sure if there’s a solution to this if you’re using online functionality, since the OS will most likely require the user to opt in for online communications for an untrusted app.

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This Thread is ten years old now. Im Interested if somone has made new experiences on this. Especially with Unreal 5.2.

Would be nice to know how too reduce the outgoing connections to Zero.

I want that any Firewall Notificiation only Pops up, as soon the user hits connect and not generally at game StartUp.

What would be your way to achieve this ?

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